Why choose Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine?

Acupuncture’s proven effectiveness over 2,500 years is being embraced around the world and is gaining popularity in the United States as a powerful complement to Western Medicine. 

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) theory, health is a function of harmony in the body.  When the body is out of balance, there is disease and pain. Acupuncture seeks to restore balance and, in so doing, restore health.

History

The oldest surviving work about acupuncture, called the Huang Di Nei Jing, was written about 2,300 years ago.  This book outlined the basics of theory and practice of what we now know as Traditional Chinese Medicine.  Amazingly the recommendations made in the Nei Jing are some of the same that you will hear from doctors today.  Long before high tech exams, tests, and research existed, these Chinese scholars saw the virtue in regular healthy eating, physical movement and moderate consumption of alcohol.  Even as old as the Nei Jing is, it is a collection of knowledge that was already established when it was written.  So, while 2,300-2,500 years is commonly used to answer the question "how old is acupuncture",  it is older and more widespread than most might think.

In 1991 a hiker in the Swiss Alps came across the body of a man, frozen and face down in the ice, now know as Otzi the ice mummy.  After the body was extricated from the ice and examined, he was found to be about 5000 years old.  Incredibly, because he was frozen, all of his skin and organs were, more or less, intact.  Researchers found unusual tattoos on Otzi that didn't seem ornamental and were aligned in a series of crosses and lines at different parts of the body.  They were perplexed until they realized that these lines and crosses seemed to line up with acupuncture points. Imaging studies of Otzi they revealed that he had degenerative disc disease in his low back which would have caused pain and could have significantly impaired mobility.  Amazingly those tattoos are in some of the places acupuncturists still use today to treat low back pain.  It is likely that even 5000 years ago, in what we now know as Europe, people were using a technique that bears some resemblance to modern day acupuncture.  Which begs the question, why is this medicine considered to be Chinese?

It is possible that these sort of treatments were commonly used even 5000 years ago and the reason they are considered to be a cultural staple of China and not modern day Europe has more to do with consistency of government during the Middle Ages.  China, however, has the oldest culture on Earth with writings, traditions and language surviving for thousands of years.

Eventually acupuncture did cross the Pacific in 1971 when President Richard Nixon went to China. A reporter for the New York Times, James Reston, had an appendicitis and needed an operation. The operation was performed using acupuncture as the anesthetic and to control his post-operative pain.  This is usually cited as the beginning of the rise of acupuncture in the United States.  Acupuncture continues to gain in popularity as more and more people find out how effective it can be to combine Traditional Chinese Medicine with our modern Western Medicine.  When the best each system has to offer is utilized, a truly long and healthy life is possible.